


Little Gifts

by KittyViolet



Category: Marvel 616, New Mutants, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: F/F, Office, Presents, Xavier Institute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 14:13:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16477097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyViolet/pseuds/KittyViolet
Summary: Halloween is a stressful time for teachers at the future Xavier School. Lovers help each other out.





	Little Gifts

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the Days of Future Middle Age universe, in which Kitty and Illyana are married and teaching at the school, although they may have other jobs too.

“Oh!” says Kitty, after Illyana comes up from behind, in her office, and touches her shoulder. “That was meta-scary.” 

Meta-scary is one of their private words: it’s what happens when Illyana does something that would have scared, or discomfited, a third party, but Kitty totally gets and regards as cute. In this case it’s her habit of approaching from the shadows, silently. If you were looking down from the office ceiling, if there were cameras on the doorframe, the kind Kitty turns on to keep track of visitors (and leaves turned off at other times), you would see Magik emerge as if from nowhere, her red-nailed, black-sleeved, pale-skinned hand on her wife’s deep blue day-in-the-classroom top. (Kitty thinks of it as her Star Trek top, since it has something like an insignia over the left breast pocket.)

“Megan is handling Halloween spirit repulsion,” Kitty says. “You shouldn’t have to do it this year.” Ilya remembers the first time she did. The malevolent spirits keep their distance now; some of the younger students—those without demons and magic in their own backstories-- even dress up and trick-or-treat on the Upper West Side.

“I won’t,” Illyana says. “Not here anyway. The spirits from Limbo, though. I’d like to repel some of them back to where they belong.” She keeps her hand on her wife’s shoulder but turns slightly as if to give the unseen a side-eye.

Illyana is still technically Queen of Limbo, though she doesn’t have to live there now; what she does have to do is figure out which spirits and demons and gorgons and once-malevolent sprites live where, and which ones come, suitably bound by her spells, to Earth. Miami is still a city, and not a lake, because Ilya (with help from Forge) figured out how to get Dagon (“upward man and downward fish,” the 40-foot-long and formerly malevolent Phoenician sea-god) to power the pumps. Multiply that kind of work by about 200, scale it up until you’ve got ice demons keeping the Fertile Crescent cool enough that humans can live there still, scale it down until you’ve got a reformed mischief demon working nights and weekends on HVAC, and Magik has a lot to track.

Last night Kitty opened her partner’s third lingerie drawer (there are three lingerie drawers, all black) and found a butterfly clip full of handwritten lists with demons’ names and powers and tasks. One of the lists was in a thick, scabby deep crimson ink that might have come from a quill pen. Or not. Lose track of a demon, and bad things happen.

The xPhone on Kitty’s desk rings: it’s at once unearthly and pleasant, the start of a new hit song. Above all it’s insistent; it grabs your attention and holds it, like all the new Starsmore and Haines songs. “Don’t,” Ilya says. “Be professional.”

Kitty’s been caught; she was just about to phase her hand through the phone instead of picking up, which would have cut off the caller and reset the phone. But some of the new X-kids have living, interested, alert, non-hostile parents.

“Xavier Institute and School,” Kitty says. “Happy Halloween. You’ve reached the Principal’s office; how can we help you?” 

No baseline human could safely work answering phones at the Xavier School, and at the moment no mutant wants the job. So inquiries go right to Kitty. It could be worse.

Illyana rocks back quietly and listens, jeans tucked into her leather boots. She takes, from her duster, her own xPhone and a parchment notepad, and a quill pen and a nail-polish-sized bottle of something green and fragrant, and starts to make notes, naming demons in almost a whisper, so as not to disturb Kitty’s call. “Issacheroth, Hudson water quality patrol,” she says. “Vanaterga,” and then a language no one else halfway human can hear.

“No we do not,” Kitty says. And then, “Not normally. We can’t, I’m sorry. We do not release that kind of personal information without the student's consent. You’ll have to ask your daughter. Yes, I said your daughter. I’m sorry. This conversation is over.” She puts the phone down.

“Helicopter parents,” Kitty says aloud, and then “Doug, will you get your boyfriend out of here?” Because, of course, the paper shredder by the desk, which Kitty definitely does not need (Lockheed just turns unwanted paper to ecologically responsible ash) has turned into a pair of toy helicopters with googly eyes, watching over a third, tiny helicopter, towing the tiny one around the room around the room on a glowing black and gold wire. “DOUG!”

There’s a high-pitched nonmusical sound, as if from an old modem, and Illyana opens the door. All three copters buzz off.

Kitty is tapping on her phone, and tapping again, and frowning, and frowning harder still.

“Another one,” Illyana says. “Helicopter special?”

“Worse,” Kitty replies. “Shapeshifter whose parents don't get it. Wrong side of history. I wish I could send them to space.” Parents of shapeshifters call when their mutants start school and ask whether the teachers or the principals can make them pick one shape and stick to it, or get them to stop using powers at home, or convince them to travel with an image inducer, even when the kids don't want one.

Kitty does not actually want to send uncomprehending parents into the vacuum of space. Illyana, however, has considered it.

The xPhone sounds its power chords again. “Xavier Institute and School. Happy Halloween. You’ve reached the Principal’s—no, they don’t; of course they do; if I hang up and then you call back and press 1745, of course you can leave a message for Rahne.” (Rahne’s code is 1745, for Scotland; Kitty’s, 1837, for Lovelace and Babbage.) 

Kitty sighs. “Mutant hospitality trick or treating takes place at the school on November 1, not on Halloween. We’d like your children to enjoy their own neighborhoods. Yes, you can bring your extra candy. Yes, that is an approved use for the techno-organic virus. No, we do not release it. No, of course not.” Pause. “No!” And again. “Xavier Institute, please hold?”

Illyana has given Kitty the sign for “hold,” not an ASL sign but a mime for an old-school, handle-and-cord telephone. There's a flash of gold light, a blob like pewter settling into an animal shape in midair. And then, with a few hand gestures, there’s a two-headed, five-handed demon with the body of a songbird and the feet of a miniature goat, standing unsteadily and then kneeling securely on top of the blotter on Kitty’s desk. The Institute’s xPhone rings again, and the demon, who smells like vanilla cake, picks it up. 

“Xavier Institute and School. Happy Halloween. I’m her assistant. How can I help you?” the demon says in a mellifluous, Irish-accented alto. And then, “7:30pm, that’s right. Thanks for calling.”

It rings once more. “Xavier Institute and School. Happy Halloween. I’m her assistant. How can I help you?... Antarctica. Yes, of course she’ll be able to graduate. Can we email you to follow up?”

"Xavier Institute. Yes she will. 9353. That's a museum. No, the Baldwin Museum. We do not. Thank you!" The demon bends down, stamps their tiny hooves, begins to type. Is the demon processing receipts and using accounting software? They are.

"Better than Bobby," Kitty says.

“Xavier Institute and School. Happy Halloween. I’m her assistant…. Cornflakes. No, that’s gross. Goodbye, Quentin.” And then the demon folds their heads under their single, flightless wing, awaiting another phone call, or perhaps mail delivery.

“Where did you… oh,” Kitty says. “Uh, thank you? That is not very romantic but it is very romantic. They're the best gift you could get me.” They kiss, not for long, but passionately. “Speaking of useful presents. I made you this.” Kitty pulls a thumb drive from her sleeve, and Ilya plugs it into her own xPhone.

A three-dimensional grid, like a spreadsheet with sparkles and hologram scaffolds, blooms out of her screen. Unfamiliar emoticons, tiny pictures of scarlet and ebony and bone-white and chartreuse and emerald lizards and mammals and raptors and other entities that could not exist in our world, hundreds of these things, move around the grid before settling down on it, each with a glowing tag and some words attached.

“It’s all the demons you command right now,” Kitty says. “So you can keep track of them easily. See, there’s Dagon in Miami, and Infrajehosephat at the insulin plant in Buffalo.” Fire demons make very good catalysts for hormone synthesis, it turns out; you have to understand both alchemy and endocrinology to understand why. When Kitty got Ilya and Hank back on speaking terms, five years ago, she was saving lives.

“You can cross-check for the ones that need new binding spells, or plant food, or more time in Limbo, or if anybody’s escaped.” There must be hundreds of entries, each with its own metadata. How long did it take Kitty to program this thing?

Illyana’s eyes light up. “You know how to make a g—a grown woman cry,” she says, not crying, but stroking Kitty's fingertips with her own. 

The xPhone rings again, and the bundle of feathers answers. “I’ll see if they’re in. THEY, Mr. Roth. Of course.”

“We’ve got a few hours,” says Kitty, and kisses her wife again. “Where to? Cup of tea in the Savage Land?”

“Long Island Iced Tea?” counters Illyana, pulling a silver flask and a tea egg out of a satchel. "We have time, Katyana. Let's go use it."

“Just one,” says Kitty. And the stepping disc appears.

**Author's Note:**

> For teen Illyana's first Halloween at the Xavier School, see "What We Have Is Better," https://archiveofourown.org/works/12698049/chapters/28954410, by the present author!


End file.
